Manantial de Porfida
La Altagracia, Dominican Republic
This cave is right in the middle of town, on a small lot behind Colmado David. After climbing down the sink, you need to walk left and go through about 100 meters of slimy and very slippery dry cave to get to the edge of the entrance sump. The line starts just below water level, it is shallow and nasty at first and will probably percolate and silt out for the first 20 meters or so, once past that you emerge into a wide bedding plane that has a big gas pocket and large cavern above. The cave then opens up and is really big for the whole dive, there are no decorations but many really weird geological features and potholed ceilings everywhere.
Throughout the dive there are numerous gas pockets and large dry caves and wild haloclines. The tunnels are very wide and although it is right in the middle of town the water is crystal clear and has no apparent contamination, I did say apparent as this dive is directly below a small rural town, it looks and smells clean at least. The cave is very shallow with a max depth of only 9 meters, and has very cool dark clay banks everywhere. At the far end of the cave the tunnel goes into a tight restriction and eventually chokes out in a room.
This cave is suitable for any configuration, but carrying doubles through the dry cave to the sump will be difficult.
click for a high resolution printable version of this cave map.
DRSS /// Manantial de Porfidia | DRSS /// Manantial de Porfidia | DRSS /// Manantial de Porfidia |
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DRSS /// Manantial de Porfidia | DRSS /// Manantial de Porfidia | DRSS /// Manantial de Porfidia |
DRSS /// Manantial de Porfidia | DRSS /// Manantial de Porfidia | DRSS /// Manantial de porfidia |
DRSS /// Manantial de Porfidia | DRSS /// Manantial de Porfidia | DRSS /// Manantial de porfidia |